Energy Sources

[BK12321]

This semester my teacher was talking to us about a lot of different energy sources. Solar energy, coal, wind, hydro, nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, antimatter/dark matter (particularly awesome, google "antimatter" for some good readin'), etc. Do you guys have any info in antimatter, I googled and got that it is INCREDIBLY efficient, like 100% or close to, and the output is INSANE.

"Antimatter has tremendous energy potential, if it could ever be harnessed. A solar flare in July 2002 created about a pound of antimatter, or half a kilo, according to new NASA-led research. That's enough to power the United States for two days.

Laboratory particle accelerators can produce high-energy antimatter particles, too, but only in tiny quantities. Something on the order of a billionth of a gram or less is produced every year."

Do you guys have info on any other energy sources, and what else is known about antimatter? This stuff is interesting. Also, any advances?

It would be cool if we could learn how to harness it somehow, electricity would be out the window.

 

[f95toli]

Anti-matter is not really a SOURCE of energy because we have to make it ourselves, as far as we know there is no natural source of anti-matter so the only way to get hold of it is to produce it in e.g. an accelerator.

However, if we could somehow come up with a cheap way to produce anti-matter is would be a good way store energy.

There is a good book called "The Physics of Star Trek" where this is discussed in more detail.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Antimatter in general is the complete mirror opposite of matter. There's anti proton, anti electron (positron), anti neutrons, anti neutrinos, anti muons, anything you name it. Except anti-photon which doesn't exist.

If you happen to play Unreal Tournament the old one, the description of the shock rifle said something about anti-photon which is utter bullsh1t

Antimatter has opposite charge, oposite spin, but same mass of matter. When antimatter and their counterpart colliides, 2 photons are emittied as energy. Because matter is translated to energy purely, the efficientcy is 100% High energy gamma photons are produced. And energy released is according to Eistein's E=mc^2 so energy released even for milligrams of matter and antimatter is enormous

And if enough antimatter there are, a weapon of this sort is too dangerous. It eats through matter, and release lethal radiation.


However currently too much energy is required to make antimatter. It can be used as a energy storage, but not energy source. However, even storing antimatter is tricky. They just eat through matter so you cam't really have a "container"

What we do is we trap the charged antimatter in a magnetic field. The uncharged antimatter is more tricky.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

if there is a way to collect antimatter produced by the sun or black holes or anything, it could be stored in a magnetic field and reacted with matter to produce energy.

 

[unipidity]

I was not aware of any solar production of antimatter; however, it is worth noting a few things already mentioned; it is not generally an energy source, but a storage method. However easy it is to collect solar antimatter, its probably easier to build a freaking Dyson sphere (google) which will never happen. Also; some annihlation pathways involve the prodution of pions; I only know this due to the fact that hypothecated antimatter thrust is derived from the heating of Tungsten by pions. At least, when I last actually checked my memory it was. Im a bit tipsy, so who knows.

 

[Calin]

Yes, there is and easy way to collect antimatter produced by black holes: go to the black hole, take the antimatter, come back. Storing that antimatter makes it just a tad more difficult than taking normal matter from a black hole (or taking nucleonic matter from a black hole)
Not in a million lifetimes, I reckon

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
When antimatter and their counterpart colliides, 2 photons are emittied as energy. Because matter is translated to energy purely, the efficientcy is 100% High energy gamma photons are produced. And energy released is according to Eistein's E=mc^2 so energy released even for milligrams of matter and antimatter is enormous.

This is a very common misconception, which I've pointed out to you in the past.

When colliding matter and antimatter, most of the output is in pions. Neutral pions can decay into pairs of photons, but charged pions cannot due to conservation of charge. Charged pions will decay into muons and muon antineutrinos, while muons will decay into electrons and electro antineutrinos.

Kinematics requires that the neutrinos carry off much of the energy, leaving you with a maximum efficiency of around 40%, which is still quite impressive.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: BK12321
Do you guys have info on any other energy sources, and what else is known about antimatter? This stuff is interesting. Also, any advances?

Drop anything into a black hole. It will emit radiation equal to around 50% of its rest mass energy due to the extreme acceleration.

There are a variety of more complex ways to extract energy from black holes, and the supermassive black holes in galactic cores are the largest electricity generators in the universe.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: BK12321

Do you guys have info on any other energy sources, and what else is known about antimatter? This stuff is interesting. Also, any advances?

Zero point energy, which may be extracted using the Casimir Effect. It's essentially free energy, but we have no practical way to extract it in usable quantities.

 

[AluminumStudios]

Originally posted by: unipidity
I was not aware of any solar production of antimatter;

Solar flares act like particle accelerators and create antimater the same way particle accelerators do.

I don't clearly remember the particles invovled but I believe hydrogen nuclei are slammed together and one of the byproducts is a positron. A massive solar flare can product up to a pound of anti-matter if you work out the numbers ... but it's all mixed in with lots of other particles and flies off into space at 1.5+ million miles an hour - not exactly harnessable.

But to answer the original thread - the law of conservation of energy basically stops anti-matter from being a useful source fo energy because it takes so much energy to produce it since it doesn't exist (can't exist) naturally in useful quantities in our matter universe. The best you can get in terms of natural anti-matter is a few positrons sailing along with the solar wind until they hit other solar wind particles or our atmosphere.